


Aftermath

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Grief, M/M, Mourning, No Dialogue, POV First Person, PTSD, Phone messages, aftermath of New York
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 04:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night after the... incident with Loki and the Chitauri in New York, Pepper phones one Phil Coulson because she desperately needs someone to talk to. <br/>She gets his voicemail.</p>
<p>Someone has to be the one to listen to those messages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Echoes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003918) by [quandong_crumble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quandong_crumble/pseuds/quandong_crumble). 



> Inspired by the fic Echoes by quandong_crumble. I promised her a companion piece. 
> 
> Beta'd by quandong_crumble.

Your office is too quiet now, too empty, lifeless, and I can barely stand the silence. I don’t make any noise though, it just seems wrong. This was your space. You should have been sitting behind your desk, looking far too neat and tidy for just having had part in saving the world. You should have been there to scrutinise me, ask me questions that only you and I have the answers to, and then give me that smile, and tell me to have my mission statement on your desk by the morning. But you’re not here, and I’ll never see you again.

They all avoid me, ‘cept for Tasha, and I don’t blame them. I was compromised. But I wish you were here, to tell me that I’m all right, that everything is going to be okay, and that you still want to be my handler. That you won’t shy away from me like everyone else is.

Your things are on your desk, in a messy pile, like you’d never let them be. Like they don’t know what else to do with them right now. Your phone, your house keys, your stupid Cap cards. I bet you would have completely fanboyed out when you met him; fuck knows you didn’t shut up about him since they pulled him out of the freezer. 

It’s stupid, irrational, I know, but I can’t help but straightening them all up. Lining your cell phone up next to the desk phone, within easy reach, like you always had it. The house keys go in the top drawer, in the little divider just like they’re meant to. I’m reaching for the cards, but I can’t touch them. They’re stained red, and all I can do is stare. Tasha said they had your blood on them, but I didn’t believe it, because I know you’d never carry them with you. 

But that doesn’t explain the blood. 

The world feels like it’s closing in on me again, it’s cold, and I’m half sure that Loki is back, that I’m losing myself to him all over again, and the other half of me is searching desperately for an exit.

I'm on the desk and pushing the air vent up when your cell rings, and I almost stop to answer it, because phones don’t ring at three in the morning for no reason, but I can’t deal with this right now. I hoist myself into the air duct, and I try to get away from the ringing, even though the sound follows me. I keep going until I can’t hear it anymore, until I find the junction I used to hide in, half way between Tasha’s room and your office, because it was safe there, and I was close to the only two people who loved me. But you’re gone now, and it’s happening all over again, I’m losing the people in my life.

I lose track of time, just huddle there and wish, like some naive kid, that when I venture back out again, everything will be set right in the world, and you won’t be gone anymore. That it’ll just have been another nightmare in a long history of nightmares. It’s that immature hope, I think, that makes me drag myself back through the air duct and makes me drop back into your office. 

It’s still empty. 

You’re still dead. 

The light on your phone is flashing, singling that there are messages. You never liked me looking at your phone, but I figure there’s no harm now. You’re dead, and it’s not like it’ll be work related. They all know you’re dead. I tell myself that I’ll just check who it is, and if they’re someone who mattered, I’ll call them, or message them, and let them know. Because someone has to. And I knew you the best. You’d have wanted me to, I think. Bet you didn’t even think about who would have to tell me, ‘cause you still thought I was compromised. I wonder if you’d have done it, gone after Loki yourself, if I’d been right where I was supposed to be, on the right side. You told me I’d be doing good, that I’d be one of the good guys, back when you recruited me. But I wasn’t. And I realise, that if I hadn’t been compromised, then Loki wouldn’t have been able to do what he did. And you wouldn’t be dead. 

It’s my fault. I killed you. 

So it should be me who has to tell whoever it is that called. 

It’s easy accessing your voice mail, and it’s almost a relief that it’s a mechanical voice telling me that you’ve got nine new messages. I don’t think I’d have been able to go through with it if it’d been your voice. 

The first message starts playing, and it isn’t a voice I recognise, but the woman who called calls herself Pepper, and it’s a name I know from you and Tasha talking. She’s with Stark. And that’s why she’s calling. I can tell she’s upset, and I guess it makes sense, because she watched the guy she loves fly through a hole in the sky, and then fall back to earth. But at the same time I hate her, because she got Stark back, and how is it fair that she doesn’t think she’s coping. She didn’t have to get cognitively recalibrated by her best friend, be told the only other person who cares is dead, and then have to go save the fucking world. I had to do that last part. Had to, because it was my fault in the first place that all this happened. But it doesn’t change the fact that I went into battle with only Tasha to vouch for me, and your death hanging over me like a shroud. 

The message ends half way through, she ran out of time. I delete it, and wonder if I should just hang up, stop listening to these people who think you’re alive and can help them. It’s not fair, why should they demand your help when you’re not even around to help me. 

The next message starts and it’s that woman again, continuing on like she hadn’t had to call back. It’s more of the same, but I can’t bring myself to delete the message without listening to it in full, because while it’s all about her and Stark, it’s so painfully about you too. You meant something to these people. Each and everyone one of Fury’s little fucked up band, they rallied together because you went and got yourself stabbed. It’s like you planned it, you stupid selfish fucking bastard. You believed so much in this idyllic Avengers Initiative that you went and got yourself killed to make it work. 

The message ends and I realise that I wasn’t paying attention to the end of it, but I don’t hit replay, I just delete it and move onto the next one. It’s her again, and part of my wonders why Stark hasn’t fucking told her you’re gone. It’s cruel almost. 

I guess some things are just too painful. And you really did mean a lot to people. You collected a bunch of misfits in life, scattered broken parts from all over space and time. 

And in death you brought them together to be mangled parts of a whole. A team. The Avengers. 

Like it matters anymore. I know that as soon as this is really over, everyone will scatter. We’re not made to be a team. You’re not here to hold us together anymore. The Council might think that we’re Fury’s little club, but we were yours. 

I was yours. 

Now I’m nobody’s. 

Again. 

I delete one message after another, there is more pleading, wanting to understand, crying, and finally screaming. She found out, after all, that you are dead. I can feel myself starting the crumble, coming apart at the seams. I know you’re gone, even if they won’t let me see your body yet. I know it, but it’s in that moment, hearing some woman I’ve never met begging you to still be alive, that it really finally hits. 

I’m breaking apart, along all those fragile lines that you painstakingly stitched back together over the years. I’d promised myself that I’d never come to rely on someone so much ever again, not after what happened with my parents, or Barney, or Trickshot. I’d been determined to be my own person, never to rely on anyone ever again. But you came along, and made me need someone again, and fuck, I hate you for it right now. Hate you for leaving me here. I wish I could scream like Pepper is on the phone messages, but I’m shattering apart without a sound, it’s like screaming inside my head while Loki controlled everything else. 

The message ends and I delete it without even thinking, it’s like I’m on autopilot now. There’s one last message, and then it’ll be over. One more message to drive home that you’re really dead. That I’m back to being alone. 

She’s apologising. To whoever had to listen to the messages. To me. I don’t want her apologies though, I want you back. The phone hits the wall before I even realise that I’ve thrown it. It doesn’t shatter, it doesn’t break, it’s stronger than me. 

I’m falling apart, without you here to hold me together anymore. I’m screaming but I don’t know if it’s confined within my head or not anymore. The desk slips away beneath me and the floor is there, holding me, stopping me from slipping away entirely. I wish it’d let me go, let me fade away. My safety nets are all too far out of reach, the air duct looks miles away, my bow is back in the armoury, Tasha is not where I need her, and you’re gone entirely. I’m reaching for ghosts, when I should be running from them. 

I can’t stop the screaming, the endless feeling of falling, like I’ve thrown myself off a building blindly, you aren’t there to guide me to a safe landing. 

It doesn’t stop until the door of your office opens bringing me crashing back down onto the carpeted floor, and it hurts like a three story drop even though I’ve been there the whole time.

I want it to be you, but I know it can’t be you. It’s Tasha, I know it without even opening my eyes, I know the way she sounds, smells, the vibes she gives off, I’d know her anywhere, she’s as much a part of me as you were. With her there, I feel like half of me has been replaced. The other half of me is dead, lying on a slab somewhere, with you. 

She’s picking me up, trying to hold the fragmented parts of me back together, but it’s too little too late. I need you, to stitch me back together, to catch me when I throw myself off buildings, to stop the nightmares I pretend not to have. 

I can hear sounds, familiar and foreign all at once, Russian lullabies that Tasha only ever brings out when one of us is badly injured. I know there are no physical wounds, but I’m bleeding out all over the floor of your office. 

There is red, everywhere, over taking the blue that still lingers after Loki. We’re covered in it, both Tasha and me, and you’re not there anymore to try and help us scrub it away. 


End file.
